Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 11th, 2026
"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: If we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." — Anne Bradstreet
Discussion on the craft of venture capital, this was incredibly instructive. Well worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs7bhb3NEFc&t=3014s
2. "When you ask the question about the ROI on AI, it depends what you are doing with it. Some tasks are about 100% replaceable, others are 100% replaceable but with some human supervision, others are 60% replaceable, others 20% replaceable, and so on. For a long time coming, AI’s path through the economy will be “jagged.”
To answer the question about a bubble - on the tasks where AI is 100% ready or, will be 100% automated in the next 2-3 years, there is no bubble. On the tasks where it will take longer, yes there is a bubble as the near term and mid-term ROI isn’t there. As you look lower down the stack, this is why many investors are so excited about the component layers like chip manufacturing and networking.
Even if the current version of AI is slowing down as LLM progress seems to stall, there are technologies coming behind it. Some of them will provide new capabilities. Some will lower the costs of the existing capabilities to expand their use cases and TAM. And edge AI is coming and will suck up much of the capacity of the chip industry if data center slows."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/why-ai-is-and-also-isnt-a-bubble
3. "Looking back on the conference, I sensed energy and big opportunities for the future in a few places in particular:
-AI is reinventing financial services, in some cases from first principles.
-Stablecoins are becoming the Internet’s native settlement layer.
-Regulation and technology are fusing into programmable trust."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/the-next-fintech-wave-ai-stablecoins
4. Lots of scary thoughts: We are not ready for war in America yet. Plenty of work to be done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai50lRs-5bQ
5. This was a deep and thought provoking interview. Not just about investing, although there is a lot on this. Much of it is on finding your authentic self and doing what honors your authenticity in work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acwhhgGGdX8&t=4971s
6. "The divide between asset owners and everyone else is getting wider. Here we’ll highlight new data proving this out (opinions are worthless without data), explain why betting on ourself is the only logical conclusion in 2025 and how inflation is no longer becomes a concern as a business owner.
If you feel like the life path you were sold doesn’t work anymore… you’re right. It is a relic of the past. Much like headcount being a flex during the industrial revolution. The real flex is different in 2025. It is profit/person, ownership percent of a niche business and how much of your time is in your control.
If we know that compensation is increasing slower than productivity, who is getting the spread? The answer is owners, share holders, equity, insert any word for “asset holders”. As companies become more productive and labor becomes cheaper due to AI, robots etc. It means the owners of the assets (capital allocators) are the winners. Capital is beating labor by a wide margin."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/rich-and-poor-divide-acceleration
7. "The combination of rapid technological change with heavily-entrenched tactical systems makes modern warfare more uncertain than ever before. It is impossible to tell whether an existing comparative advantage will simply disappear: 2022 showed that masses of armor could no longer simply punch through a capable defense. Although Russia has had enough of a resource advantage to keep the war going, it has been unable to restructure its forces mid-war to effect a breakthrough—pushing the conflict into the realm of strategic attrition.
In general, the more entrenched a country’s tactics are—whether because of legacy equipment, limited industrial capacity, or cultural reasons—the harder it is to adapt. The natural response, then, is to look straight to those other levels and domains from the outset."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/entrenched-tactics-and-comparative
8. Global Macro and crypto. I find these conversations to be helpful to understand the future for your personal finance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMqLAaNaug4
9. Are we ready? It's about how quickly our military will adopt technology to new effective doctrine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5F6LWqkr-o&t=75s
10. "So I spent 30 days on the road to see what prosperity looks like up close. DC, Berkeley, Baltimore, New Hampshire, New York, two cities in Florida, then Prague and Kilkenny, Ireland. The same theme surfaced: people don’t feel the prosperity that’s supposedly surrounding them. They feel the physical friction.
What became clear almost immediately is that the prosperity is real, it’s just not showing up in the places people actually live. It exists in balance sheets, in stock portfolios, in data centers behind chain-link fences. But in daily life like in commutes, in childcare costs, in housing, in safety, in community, people are feeling decay. I kept running into the same contradiction: a wealthy country where everything visible seems to be slowly breaking while everything invisible keeps getting richer."
https://kyla.substack.com/p/30-days-9-cities-1-question-where
11. "In the end, this transformation redefined what society meant by “growth.” The prosperity of the industrialist had once rested on his capacity to make and sell useful goods; the prosperity of the financier now depended on movement within the realm of symbols—interest rates, valuations, derivatives, and expectations. The appearance of wealth became a substitute for wealth itself.
The change also altered the time horizon of enterprise. A factory demanded years of patient investment, but a financial product could be invented and sold within weeks. The long view of the builder yielded to the short view of the trader. Markets rewarded agility, not durability. The capacity to arbitrage, restructure, or re-package assets came to be regarded as a higher skill than the slow work of design and manufacture.
In this environment, the language of production gave way to that of returns. Efficiency was redefined as the reduction of costs rather than the creation of value. Whole industries were re-engineered for balance-sheet optimization rather than technological advance. A company could shrink its workforce, outsource its factories, and still be celebrated for “unlocking shareholder value.” The metric of success was no longer what was built or improved, but what the market capitalization reflected."
https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/the-illusion-of-progress
12. A great discussion on recent news for Vertical AI, Rare earths and China's economic challenges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1pZWfvwU08
13. Lessons from 1929 and the AI-boom or bubble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwY6F-oU2vc
14. The American chess game against Russia, I enjoyed this :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pZ3WAT-Pxs
15. "Much like other down days, we’ll still be around and crypto is not going to go anywhere. All our haters are stuck with us for another decade at minimum. The next generation needs a new system for wealth creation and outside of Crypto and Tech there isn’t much. You’re either utilizing both or you’re saving 5-10% a year in a seat where the CEO is trying to replace you with AI/software."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/surviving-the-next-12-months-in-the
16. The case for why stablecoins will enable US dollar hegemony. Very thought provoking. A must watch for those who want to understand how the world works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUPF2SH8bNk
17. Global macro in the age of AI, Stablecoins and energy. The digital economy is here, growing in parallel with the real material economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gK-TQoZqfQ
18. "From YC to bulge-bracket venture firms, the pursuit of scale has made slaves to incentives out of a broad swath of participants in tech. The fear of failure has further exacerbated that slavery. We allow our incentives to shape us because of fear. Fear of being poor, being stupid, or of simply being left behind. Fear of Missing Out.
That fear leads us down the path of normativity. We assimilate. We seek alikedness. We shave off the rough edges of our individuality until we are smoothed to the grooves of the path of least resistance. But the path of least resistance has no place for contrarian conviction. In fact, it has no place for beliefs of any kind, for fear that your beliefs will take you down paths that the consensus prefers not to go.
But there is a better way. In a world of normativity-seeking systems, anchor yourself in beliefs. Find things worth believing in. Even when they’re hard. Even when they’re unpopular. Find beliefs worth dying for. Or better yet, find beliefs worth living for.
Technology is a tool. Venture capital is a tool. YC is a tool. a16z is a tool. Attention is a tool. Anger is a tool. The good news is tools abound. But only you can be the craftsman."
https://investing101.substack.com/p/build-whats-fundable
19. "It’s a different category from those newly arrived Chinese immigrants here. The Chinese don’t do part-time jobs and so on. I would say it’s different categories. A lot of these newcomers choose Japan because Tokyo offers the best cost-effective quality of life. Inflation is mild here, and there’s this effect of the weakening Japanese yen. For them, many things are quite cheap.
Another key reason Japan is attractive to Chinese immigrants is that Japan has been relaxing its long-term visa over the past decade or so. Many recent Chinese immigrants had been to Japan as tourists in the 2010s, and then the Japanese government had been relaxing even long-term, residential-type visas. That’s why they could apply for those long-term visas and they could easily get one of those. It really makes a sharp contrast with many Western countries."
https://www.chinatalk.media/p/why-chinese-elite-run-to-japan
20. What a great book list on China, especially if you want to understand why modern China is the way it is.
https://cartographer.substack.com/p/five-books-on-china
21. Very timely discussion on AI Capex Boom and how to think about investing in it. You have to tie design to manufacturing ie. vertical integration, we are learning this the hard way in America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDeyjGfzwQ8
22. Global macro: basically the case for why money printer is going to go brrrr......BTC, ZCash and ETH.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBXNsww78PM
23. The man is controversial but he is damn smart. This interview was incredibly insightful to understanding Elon, the talent machine he built, how to measure talent and learning from investing mistakes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62X1vm3QBuE
24. American sanctions finally being somewhat serious on Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auGBL3hhLCw
25. These men are true heroes. Foreign legion in Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIg77WIkV8Q
26. What are you doing to increase your chances of luck every day? How do you increase your pain tolerance?
A great deep dive in the art and science of investing and building. This is a masterclass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_FilvFylNY&t=2429s
27. Capital controls coming to Western countries (my guess is it will be in Canada and European countries first). Word to the wise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTTcu57g_vU
28. "The goal is to maximize whatever potential you have. No one reading this is Elon. No one reading this should be below the median either. You’re looking to: 1) regain control of your time, 2) get there without giving up your entire young adult experiences, frugality fails this hurdle and 3) get to each decade with minimal to no regrets. No matter what you will miss opportunities and make mistakes but the regret part is the real tell (better or worse).
The people who end up in the top 1%? They are a combination of both the smartest and the most consistent (decent but not world class talent): 1) continuing to grind as people quit, 2) sticking to the same process in the mind numbing boring or painful times and 3) recognizing which stage in life they are in.
If you do a quick inventory of the people around you, its easy to see all the common pitfalls and how they drop out. Typically lifestyle creep, physical burnout and the most common: despair/weak mentally.
Knowing this, step 1 is optimizing your life for minimal attrition. Create a system that you’re *certain* will work over the long term. Don’t veer from it. Compounding is heavily overestimated in a single year, and drastically underestimated over 10 years."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/talent-isnt-your-problem-attrition
29. Talk about a revenge arc. Pretty amazing founder comeback story with Parker Conrad. Plenty of insights in building and running a high growth business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yztV-sR4cU
30. Good takes here on geopolitics by old hand George Friedman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2baXVUppFw
31. "New York is uniquely suited for “tech-related” companies.
This city thrives on being an industry town. While DC is politics and LA is entertainment and SF is tech, NYC is…a dozen different industries. Being at the epicenter of your industry—where the best talent and customers are—is a huge advantage when building in applied AI."
https://www.digitalnative.tech/p/new-york-is-an-industry-town
32. The backstory of A16Z's American Dynamism Fund. Very timely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy8c30fdBQ8
33. "Inheritance does matter in that context, Kurtz argues, as there is no debate over whether there will be an economic elite—such is a fact of life—but rather over whether the elite is virtuous and focused on stewardship and higher ideals, or working some job that supports the lifestyle they grew up with, which primarily means banking or consulting.
All that is to say: a real upper class is a hugely pro-social force. A rapacious oligarchy is not. A miserly plutocracy is not. And a “professional” elite that’s always thinking about the next scheme or round of golf, rather than the next generation and a continued sense of tradition, certainly is not."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/how-to-build-a-dynasty-that-last
34. A wide ranging conversation and the case for American Dynamism and innovation. Also the stupidity of the 5 year plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqYUH7r96i4
35. "There is Never a “Right Time”
You will NEVER have a clear period of weeks and months where you have no responsibilities and obligations and nothing else going on so you can “finally” dial in to the thing you want to do.
If you ask anyone who succeeds at getting what they want, they do it despite not having the right circumstances or go out of their way to create those circumstances for themselves."
https://lifemathmoney.com/the-time-is-never-right-you-have-to-make-your-own-opportunities/
36. "I’ll close with this thought: as countries continue to shift away from globalization, there is opportunity in building deeper, more consequential relationships between tech ecosystems. Founder-to-founder. Investor-to-investor. Ecosystem-to-ecosystem. The ecosystems that capitalize on these opportunities will be the ones that embrace the idea that economic prosperity >> egos.
And that magic happens at the intersection of humility and hubris."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/humility-vs-hubris
37. Some Alt-geopolitics. Always food for thought on what's going on, even if I don't agree with most of these takes.